What's Wrong with This Picture
Back up here at 32,000 feet, I'm reviewing a slide deck sent to me. It is a Power Point 2007 deck saved in the PPTX (latest) format. It was built on a PC. I received it and attempt to open it with Power Point on the Mac. It opens yet barfs on a number of slides with a "I can't read this" error. I close it and open the file in Keynote. Opens fine. All slides can be read, no problem. From Keynote, I export a copy into Power Point. Power Point on the Mac now opens the exported version perfectly.
Amazing.
Rick,
Not a surprise at all. Your Mac-exported PPT will now also open on ANY windows machine too, not just an Office 2007 one.
Go figger.
Jim
Posted by: Jim Pollock | September 18, 2008 at 01:03
I wonder why you think software ships at Microsoft with these kinds of bugs. Since you've worked there(as have I), I hope you'll agree that it is not a lack of smart, intelligent, hard working people, although at any company this large, it is hard to keep these people in a position of significant influence. Do you think a cohesive message(in your particular case, across the Office teams on different platforms) is just too hard in a company this large? Do you think the goals of the different groups are too disparate?
It's easy to complain about software but it's more interesting(to me, anyhow) to think of how to fix it, at both the engineering level AND the organizational level. I am at Google now and while Google does have an impressive concentration of talent(concentration being the keyword), I still look to some of my old managers & co-workers as role models.
-Neal
Posted by: neal | September 20, 2008 at 02:26
Neal,
I think it's just too much overhead/hard to slow down and get these teams aligned. It is not for a lack of smart people, that's for sure.
>R<
Posted by: Rick Segal | September 20, 2008 at 17:49